Oceans of Sand
by Aran'sApprentice-Meahow
Summary: There she found Roy Mustang, to all appearances playing a onesided chess game all by his lonesome at the edge of the world. RoyRiza Oneshot


_And yonder all before us lie_

_Deserts of vast eternity… _

—Paperwork. Mountains and mountains of the overwhelming paperwork that he despised. His fingers twitched slightly, rubbing callused flesh where they should've slicked across rough fabric. Ah, well. Paperwork was like violence in this world: the more you destroy, the more appears. The only way to get through this mess was to see it through the end.

Instead, Roy Mustang got up and walked to the rec room.

They'd said that he'd only be out here for a few weeks at the least. That's what "they" said. A minute outpost in the far East. He was needed, they said, to oversee the removal of an intrusion of violence and corruption involving gangs and the military. He was needed, they meant, to keep out of the way so that he wouldn't lose what little job he had left.

Early evening was break time in this town, the military embassy—that was what it felt like—nearly deserted. Roy and his paperwork couldn't afford to take breaks, so he sat in the sparsely, spaciously empty rec room instead of walking about the surrounding hole-in-the-wall shops to scavenge food or entertainment. The military office building was small, made in the old varnished wood style, full of reinforced windows and dust. One side, the front, faced the tiny weathered town. The other, the back, looked out over an ocean of the Eastern Desert, heat-hazy and resolute.

The light coming in the open window from the patio was the golden orange of almost-dusk. The single table in the room sat directly beneath the aperture, to the right of the also-open patio door. This was where Roy sat now, pushing aside a nest of empty wire chairs to settle in one, legs crossed, peering down at a chess set sloppily left out on the table in the middle of a game.

The light from outside was duskily blinding. Roy picked up the black knight and turned it over in his fingers, feeling its room-temperature, smooth marble beneath his touch. He moved it two spaces forward and one to the right, amongst a group of pawns. The Flame Alchemist was no knight. No, only for a few harrowing moments had he even escaped being a lowly pawn, a few bloody heart-wrenching moments. There was nothing to be glorified. He knew it just as well as the military did.

The man took the white castle off the board. Walls. Life bashed itself against you, but the walls always were in place, there to protect you from yourself and all the other dangers of the senseless world. A dull clink chipped the dry air as he set the rook down four spaces forward, facing the black queen. It wasn't afraid.

The wan light poured reflections onto his concentrating eye, to all appearances playing one-sided chess game all by his lonesome at the edge of the world.

—She let herself in the front door, booted feet tapping across the wooden floor planks into the empty office. The colonel's absence wasn't particularly surprising, considering the veritable mountain of documents piled in haphazard abandon all over the desk. Riza Hawkeye sighed, tutting to herself, as she cleared off a space to drop the small brown-paper grocery bag she'd carried in with her from a little convenience store in the town. Dinner was inside; she had the late shift tonight, but hunger hadn't made itself an issue yet. If she couldn't convince someone else to eat some, there would be enough for a few sparse meals…

"Colonel?" She asked the echoing rooms, walking softly down the timeworn halls, poking her head into doors, mainly deserted. "Colonel Mustang?"

The rec room. It figured, didn't it? Riza opened her mouth to berate her superior's perfection of the art of procrastination; then she shut it again, the dry heat swallowing her words, turning the rebuke to dust in her mouth.

Yes, he was there. At least some of him was. Motes flickered in the golden dusk light, dancing around Roy's head as it bent in miniscule contemplation of the chessboard, his fingers hovering about the white bishop for a moment before flitting to the castle.

"Sir," Riza said gently, "Are you 'recreating', as it were, or just getting out of paperwork?"

"Neither." He said it without looking over at her. The woman stood in the doorway to the rec room, wondering what was behind his single eye. Her practical side took over for a moment. "Who are you playing?" she offered, half-joking.

The colonel's brow furrowed in thought. "Myself," he said tautly. "God. This desert." His gaze was turned inward, only partially on the chess pieces that he maneuvered back and forth across the board. Riza found herself halfway across the room, purpose in her hands and legs and back, although her brain had a hard time catching up. Roy craned his neck to peer back at her as her hands found their way to his back, tracing circles, probing out knots of tension.

"Lieutenant…" he said, relatively meekly, brandishing the black pawn at her halfheartedly.

"We do what we can," Riza told him, economically, a tiny smile wandering across her face as she moved on to massage the hard muscles across his slumping shoulders. "Sir."

The man turned to face his chess game again, defeated. "Go on," came his voice from the other side of his head. "Go ahead and call me Roy."

"Quite gracious of you, Roy, sir."

—The next chess piece came down harder on the board than the others. Smiling again, she traced a line up Roy's back, feeling his spine through the thin material of his shirt, moving her thumb in lazy circles at the base of his neck. "What are you thinking about?" Riza asked him, blinking waning sunlight from the corner of her eye.

Instead of answering, the man stood abruptly, shaking his head, and stepped off through the door of the patio. There wasn't any real signal except for the liquid motion of his entire body, but she followed anyway.

Roy squinted into the glare, staring out across the oceans of sand spreading infinite and bleak out before them. The sinking sun cast color onto his face with its orange-gold rays. "L—Riza," he said, "Do you know the reason they sent me out here?"

"It's worth a guess, Roy." The woman's face was smiling, but her voice was kinder than that. "After what happened with the Führer…despite the fact that he was a homonculus, they still had treason on their hands…plotting…heroism, Roy. You know the military. They couldn't fire you, but this is just as bad."

"You make it sound like I'm a hero. An innocent child died that night. Thousands of Ishbalans. How many more?"

Riza watched his eye cloud, feeling her own face crumpling into harshness. She gestured out at the desert in its blinding intensity. "Look," she said. "We're here."

"In the desert."

"In the desert." She turned to face him, taking him by the arm with light fingers.

"In a place where life goes on," Roy said to her, said to her face, "No matter how much we drown in it." Facing her, his hand lifted to touch the patch over the other eye; her hand darted up and caught it, kept it from obstructing his face.

"A lifetime driven by a single force," the man said, almost smiling. "It's all gone now. I doubt I'll reach the office of Führer at this rate."

Riza leaned up to look into his eye, letting her face clear. "Then I guess I'll have to stay in the military for the rest of my life," she said decidedly to his mouth, feeling his breath across her cheek.

His eye was burning for a single moment; then it subsided, looking into the sand again. Something rushed out of her body, blown away by a hot evening breeze, and she pressed her lips against his jaw just beneath his chin instead, staying there for just long enough. There was a whole shimmering desert out there and a million oases to go, because now there was time.

Roy's gaze didn't shift; but his arm came up and curled around her waist securely, his hand twisting, still in her grip, to weave in between her fingers and relax loosely entwined into the air.Here in the desert, even the walls were hazy, mainly mirages that wavered away with the falling of night. Riza rested her head in the hollow of his neck and followed his eye's direction out to nowhere, where the sun scattered dying gold over the sand.

One mind; one purpose; uncountable lives to rebuild and sins' effects to work against. Later can come as it may; there is only now.

XXXX

Well, that turned out interestingly. I'm rather happy with it. I was inspired by a chapter picture in book 8 combined with the music I was playing at the time: _Leaving Ninety-Nine_ by Audio Adrenaline, if you know them. Btw, the quote at the top is from a poem called _To His Coy Mistress_…I forgot the poet, but he was sorta famous or something. My lit teacher could tell me. I love the imagery.

Can anyone tell me whether I spelled 'Führer' right?

Well, whatever…in the hopes that this has you feeling the same inexplicable way that it has me. Please do me the favor of reviewing. --AA-M


End file.
